Chad: Calm returned to Chad's capital, N'Djamena, last night after a day of intense fighting between rebels and government forces.
Expat oil and aid workers - mainly French - were told to hunker down at home during several hours of artillery and machine gun exchanges.
By the end of the day President Idriss Deby said his forces had destroyed a rebel force trying to enter the city. He told French radio station RFI: "The situation in N'Djamena is under the control of the defence and security forces." The French foreign ministry confirmed that the main rebel army had been halted some 30km from the capital, but added that isolated units had entered N'Djamena.
Chad - a dusty, landlocked nation whose northern third lies within the Sahara desert - has been wracked by violence for most of its short history since gaining independence from France in 1960.
Ethnic tensions, the territorial ambitions of neighbours such as Libya and oil reserves have all created an explosive mixture.
The latest wave of violence coincides with a bloody civil war in the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from that conflict have crossed into Chad.
"There has always been a fear that the conflict in Darfur could destabilise the entire region and this may be part of what we are seeing in Chad," said a western diplomatic source.
Recent months have seen a series of cross-border skirmishes, as Chadian forces have chased rebels into Darfur.
Yesterday, Ahmat Allami, Chad's foreign minister, repeated his government's long-standing complaint that Sudan was responsible for arming the rebels of the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC).
"We have always said there was a premeditated aggression from Khartoum against Chad," he said in Cairo, where he had been meeting Egyptian officials.
"What we have been witnessing over the past 72 hours is only the continuation of Khartoum regime's aggressive policies against Chad." Sudan denies the charges and accuses Deby in turn of backing rebels in Darfur, who belong to his own ethnic group.
President Deby himself took power in a 1990 coup but has seen his grip on the country weaken during the past months.
Rebels of the United Front for Democratic Change, who have vowed to topple the government before elections due next month, accuse him of running an autocratic, corrupt, clan-based regime. Their three-year campaign, launched from bases in Sudan's western region of Darfur, has intensified during the past week. In three days they have managed to drive 1,000km from the border to within touching distance of the capital.
Yesterday, government troops used helicopters to attack the rebel column advancing on the city under cover of darkness in the early morning, according to diplomatic sources.
French military jets flew overhead to monitor the fighting. In recent days the former colonial power has strengthened its presence, flying in 150 additional troops to bolster 1,200 already in the city. Their role is to protect some 1,500 French citizens in the city.